All Saints CEVA
Primary School & Nursery

BELIEVE, ACHIEVE, BELONG

Digestion Investigation in Year Four

Today Year Four completed an investigation to find out how the human digestive system works:

We started with some biscuits, water, a plastic bag, orange juice, a pair of tights, a bowl and some paper cups.

First we broke up the biscuits to show how our teeth break them up in our mouth. We added water to represent saliva.

Next the broken biscuits and saliva traveled down the oesophagus to a plastic bag, which represented our stomach.

Next, we added orange juice to the bag, to represent the acid in our stomachs. We mashed the contents up, to show how food is broken down inside our stomach.

After that, we put the mashed up food into one leg of a pair of tights. The tights represented the small intestines. All the goodness from the food came out of the tights and fell into a bowl. This is similar to how the nutrients from our food are absorbed by the blood stream in our bodies.

Finally, the food left over in the small intestine was placed into paper cups, which were used to represent the large intestine.  The solid was pushed out of a hole in the bottom cup as waste. This showed us how our bodies get rid of the food that we cannot use.

Year Four completed the investigation really sensibly and learned lots of new scientific vocabulary. Well done Year Four!